One of Hyuuga’s great entertainments in life was to tease his commander. Aya-san spent way too much of his time being serious, and Hyuuga felt it was his solemn duty to make sure Aya-san’s face didn’t freeze like that. And, while Aya-san made a great show of being annoyed by the teasing, he always played along. It was always his whip he went for, when Hyuuga was teasing, never his sword, never his zaiphon, not a brisk backhand; actually, when Aya-san responded with only a quick cuff, that was when Hyuuga knew he was genuinely supposed to straighten up and take things seriously. No, when they were playing it was always the whip, which was frankly the show-off option. Aya-san’s speed and control with it were things of beauty.

And, to be honest, it made Hyuuga a little hot to watch. It sometimes made him regret that they only ever played to first touch, in those little matches. But he’d take what he could get, and that was why he was teasing Aya-san again today, lounging beside his desk in the most relaxed attitude possible while Aya-san worked methodically through a stack of tedious-looking paperwork. Aya-san’s eyes were already just a little narrowed with annoyance, which was a good start.

“I’m sure you have work of your own to be doing, Hyuuga,” Aya-san told him, not looking up from the papers.

Hyuuga took a cheery bite out of his candied apple. “Nope! Konatsu will catch anything that really needs attention. So I don’t have anything that needs doing this afternoon.” He slouched more comfortably into the chair, keeping an eye on Aya-san’s hands; after a crack like that, he expected today’s game to get off to a quick start.

So he was nonplused when Aya-san paused and looked up at him. “In fact,” his commander murmured, “you have an assignment on your desk to take care of a little noble’s rebellion in the Third District. I know because I put it there.” Hyuuga blinked, startled, and Aya-san folded his hands contemplatively on his desk. “You don’t ordinarily ignore that kind of work in favor of your games.”

Hyuuga opened his mouth and closed it again, ruefully remembering that he was speaking to one of the premier strategists of the Imperial Armed Forces. “I wouldn’t want you to feel neglected, Aya-tan.”

Aya-san gave him the faintly exasperated look he seemed to save especially for Hyuuga. “I’m not in that much need of a break, Hyuuga.” And then his eyes narrowed and he added, softer. “Are you? Is it a sparring match you’re after?”

Hyuuga smiled at him sunnily. “You know I’ll always take a match with you.” Which was only the truth.

“Hm.” Aya-san stood and came around the desk, arms folded, looking down at him thoughtfully. As if absently, his fingers brushed over the coil of his whip, and Hyuuga really couldn’t help the way his eyes flickered down to it for a single instant. When he forced them back up, Aya-san was smiling, amused. “So that’s it.”

Hyuuga felt his face heating a little. He did try not to be too demanding. It wasn’t his fault that Aya-san could read him like a book.

“Come with me,” Aya-san ordered briskly, and turned toward the door. Hyuuga trailed after with a wry smile. He should really stop thinking he could hide things from Aya-san.

They weren’t headed for any of the training halls that the Black Hawks sometimes used for pure weapons work, though, and puzzlement tugged at Hyuuga as they passed through the offices and into the halls of the officer’s quarters. Was there something Aya-san wanted from his rooms? When they arrived, Aya-san beckoned Hyuuga in with a tilt of his head. Hyuuga shrugged and slipped in after him.

Aya-san’s rooms were neat and orderly, almost painfully so; even the cushions on the couches were carefully squared up. At this hour the wide windows were in soft shadow as the light of the setting sun streamed past from the other side of the Fortress. Aya-san liked to have the morning sun instead. The indirect light was warm and low and a little unworldly.

In that light, Aya-san turned to face him, and Hyuuga was struck all over again by his commander’s beauty and danger, balanced as a fine blade. When Aya-san said quietly, “Come here, Hyuuga,” he did. He wasn’t sure where this was going, but, then, he didn’t need to know.

Aya-san smiled up at him, eyes sharp, and murmured, “If you want the whip, Hyuuga, all you need to do is ask for it.”

Shock and heat struck through Hyuuga like lightning grounding.

“Do you?” Aya-san asked.

Abruptly breathless with what Aya-san was offering him, Hyuuga wet his lips. “Yes,” he answered, husky. “Yes, I want it.” And not just to first touch, this time.

Aya-san’s smile curled a bit wider. “Tell me,” he said softly, and Hyuuga had to close his eyes for a moment.

“I want to feel it,” he whispered. “More than just one touch. I want to feel what you can do with it, god I want…” He took a shaky breath. He hadn’t honestly thought Aya-san would ever offer him this, and the thought being on the other end of Aya-san’s whip, not as a game but purely so that he could taste the intensity and artistry of it, made his knees a little weak.

Aya-san nodded. “Get undressed, then.”

Hyuuga had to take a few seconds to steady his fingers on the buckles of his own uniform, but eventually he peeled himself out of everything and tossed his clothing over the arm of Aya-san’s couch. When he turned around he had to take another second, because Aya-san had stripped off his cap and gloves, his sword and coat, even his shirt, and the shift of muscles in his back as he drew the length of his whip slowly through his hands made Hyuuga swallow hard. When Aya-san turned around, he was smiling.

“Stand here at the window,” he directed quietly, and Hyuuga did as he said, breath picking up as he turned his back to Aya-san and looked out over the glow of the city. A shiver brushed through him as Aya-san’s hands slid slowly down his arms. It came back, stronger, when strings of light coiled down after Aya-san’s fingers and lifted his arms over his head. They were weightless, there was no pressure on his arms at all, but he couldn’t move them. More curled down his legs, holding him spread open in place.

“Aya-san,” he breathed.

A new touch slid over his back, rough but butterfly light against his skin. The whip, he realized, light-headed, snaking in ceaseless S curves, side to side.

“What I can do with it,” Aya-san murmured thoughtfully behind him. “Yes. I’ll show you that, Hyuuga.” The whip snaked over Hyuuga’s ass soft as a promise and he heard Aya-san stepping back a few strides. His senses strained, poised and waiting, and he tensed hearing the soft hiss of the whip through the air.

It barely kissed his back, a single delicate sting, light and teasing. Another. Another, tracking down his body like a scatter of sparks. They flirted with Hyuuga, each bite tiny and promising, until he he was hard, arched against the strings binding him, and making pleading sounds through his teeth. “Aya-san…”

Aya-san laughed softly, and the next stroke didn’t sting; it laid a stripe of pressure against his skin, sharp and defined but almost soft in contrast. Again, and again, and Hyuuga could feel the way Aya-san was loosening each stroke at the last moment, easing the force from it. It made him flushed, a little dizzy, because this wasn’t the way they sparred. This was the way Aya-san made love.

On the next stroke, the whip cracked and Hyuuga moaned as another spark bit the inside of his thigh, just high enough to make his hips jerk futilely against the hold of Aya-san’s strings. "Aya-san." The whip fell on his back again, harder and slowly harder, each stroke driving deeper into his muscles, heating them, burning his skin, printing Ayanami’s mark on him.

Hyuuga was starting to lose everything but the feeling of the whip against his body, the hard, burning lines of it across his back and ass and down his thighs. He could see the city spread out in front of him but he couldn’t pay attention to it. He could hear the sounds of the Fortress around them but none of them mattered except the sound of the whip cutting the air and licking his skin. He could feel sweat on his skin and didn’t know whether he was hot or cold. He was achingly hard and all he wanted was for Ayanami not to stop.

The whip was heavy on him now, jerking his body in the hold of Ayanami’s strings stroke after stroke, and he was panting with it. It was sweet and intense, electric and maddening, and he yearned toward it even as it rose toward an unbearable crest. There was only raw sensation, now, a vast, hot weight of it built up under the blows of Ayanami’s whip, poised to crush him and lifting him up with every gasped breath. A hard crack of the whip across his back sent him arching senselessly against the strings, body trembling. Another stroke. Another. Breath was rasping in his throat and he wavered, senses on the edge of falling into darkness.

Quiet fell. There was warmth against his back, solid and resilient, and hands stroking slowly up and down his body, easing him back to the world. He couldn’t stand, but the strings held him up. Gradually, he recognized Ayanami’s words against his ear.

“…easy, Hyuuga. We’re done.”

Hyuuga rested his head against one of his bound arms, lips parted as he panted for breath. “Ayanami-sama,” he finally whispered, hoarse. It was the only thing that even started to get at how he felt in this time and place, after being brought to the edge like that.

“Yes,” Ayanami murmured to him. His hands moved gently over the slowly settling burn in Hyuuga’s back. “Was that what you needed?”

Hyuuga nodded quietly. He felt more wrung out than even sparring usually left him.

“Good.” The strings moved, moving him with them to turn and face Ayanami, who smiled slowly and drew his head down to a gentle kiss. Gentler than Ayanami usually was with him, and Hyuuga was grateful for it. He felt too raw and open right now to take anything else.

Ayanami looked at him thoughtfully for a moment before going to the sideboard for a glass of water. He came back and fed it to Hyuuga a sip at a time without freeing him; Hyuuga remembered Konatsu doing rather the same thing the last time Hyuuga had woken up from getting a sword through him, and wondered if Ayanami had told him what to do. Finally, Ayanami led him to the bed and let him down onto it, releasing the strings. Hyuuga curled up on his side, still dazed, content to let Ayanami draw a blanket over him and sit beside him, fingers combing through his hair. “You’re going to be marked from this,” Ayanami remarked, eventually, and Hyuuga shivered a little, eyes closing.

“Yes,” he murmured, husky. “I want that.” He wanted to carry this with him for a while, the memory of that amazing touch, so skillful and so intense. The memory of Ayanami’s gentleness, after the ferocity. “Ayanami-sama,” he said again, softly, almost entreating, on the edge of apology. Normally, he was the one who never called Ayanami that, who never demanded, by word or sign, that his friend act as his superior, the responsible leader. But right now, marked so hard and deep by Ayanami’s skill, he couldn’t do anything else.

Ayanami was silent for a moment. “I value your friendship, Hyuuga,” he said at last, quietly. “But your reverence is not a burden to me. You don’t need to hide it. Remember that.”

Hyuuga’s breath caught and he found himself trembling under Ayanami’s hand, under that permission and release. He bowed his head under Ayanami’s fingers and whispered, “Yes, Ayanami-sama.”

For just a little while he wanted to show this openly, his love and, yes, reverence for this man. Soon, he knew, he’d go back to wanting to tweak his oldest friend’s nose and tease him out of his seriousness. But for now, he could be as the other Black Hawks were, could worship the man as much as the god.

His friend would still be there on the other side.

Hyuuga lay quiet under Ayanami’s touch and let the moment be everything and all that it was.

End